Yes.  I blogged.  Now that we are all over the shock because of my recent track record, here’s what’s up.

Despite the fact that I haven’t written here in quite some time I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave out my newest little one.  In just a mere 32 +/- hours we will be holding 2.0 in our arms and officially clueing everyone into Jessi Girl’s little sister’s name.  We are quite excited about her arrival and are very ready to get the pregnancy part over with.  And now the time is here!

The pregnancy has flown by (yet still been quite miserable in the hottest summer ever…seriously…like Pompeii hot).  I’m sure a lot of the time passing so quickly is because of Jessi.  She keeps us extremely busy now and it’s a blast.  So just in case you are lost and don’t know what’s going on with us (and actually care) here’s a short rundown of our lives.

Jessi is almost a year and a half old.  She thinks she is about 6.  Her vocabulary seems to be expanding by the hour.  She is an amazing little girl and has already started dabbling with the terrible twos.  Good times.  Jack is still here.  He still loves to sleep and be lazy and loves to sleep near Jessi (as long as she isn’t awake too).  We as a family are doing great and excited to welcome 2.0 into our lives.  I haven’t blogged much in the past 6+ months because I have a rare opportunity to spend some crazy quality time with my girls.  Even if I wanted to write Jessi would not have it.  I would be sitting too still.  Trust me.  When you have one of the most adorable little girls slowly walking away looking over her shoulder saying “dada! chase?  chase?  dada!  chase?” you can’t keep doing whatever it was you were doing.  It’s just not possible.

So tomorrow our family will become a full blown family of 4.  I’m pretty sure I will have some chasing to do in the hospital, too.  Thank you for all your prayers!  Come back tomorrow to find out all about 2.0!

Today you take one of the first major steps down a path that I dread.  You are officially one year old today and that scares me.  The past year has gone by so fast it scares me to think about the next one.  Or the next one.  Or the next 20.  You are a one year old toddler fighting to be older.  You have been from day 1!

It’s hard to imagine that it has actually been 21 months since that July morning when I find out you were coming into our lives.  It’s even harder to comprehend how all the joy and excitement we had before you arrived is topped every single day we get with you.  You have already turned into such a strong willed, gorgeous, hilarious bundle of fun.

I wish I could describe to you the feeling I get when I have been gone, walk in the door and see you find daddy!  I guess that’s just one of those things you will have to wait until you have kids of your own to understand.  But trust me.  There isn’t much I love more than that!  I love getting to spend my days with you just rolling around on the ground, crawling and chasing you, hearing you squeal in delight, tickling you just to hear that laugh again, and letting you crawl all over me.

So now you are 1.  I hope and pray for many more of these to come.  I pray that you will continue to be the bundle of joy and love that you are.  I pray, just as it was recently prophetically spoken over you, that you would grow to be a spiritual leader of your generation.  I want you to know how much I love you even though you can’t understand that yet.  It scares me so much to go down this dreaded path of growing up with you, but growing up is what you do!  I have loved every single minute of walking this with you and will always be there to walk it with you.

I love you more than I know how to show you, my little California girl.

Love,

Daddy

Using only a blank bracket, a pen, 69 pieces of cheese and my 11-month-old daughter, I have created possibly my best bracket ever!  Despite the fact that I generally lose because i am a sucker for 5 seed/12 seed upsets, I successfully combined my love for March Madness and her love for cheese in a way no one expected.  After only 20 minutes of cheese gobbling we have created the bracket of all brackets for this year’s March Madness.  Next year I expect to have my own 30 minute show on ESPN to prove the amazing power of Cheesy Bracketology!

Prepare to be wowed and get your cheat on!

~Legend~

OT – Overtime (the piece of cheese entered the mouth and then at the last second was rescued…by what the rest of us would consider gross…and play continued)
Seeds – Play In game cheeses were placed next to each other.  Normal game cheeses had the higher seeds placed a little farther away from the chooser.
Favoritism – As she is 11 months old, the chooser has no affiliation with any team (despite my best efforts to brain wash her since day 1) and seemed to choose the cheeses either at random or by which team she picked to win.  (I think it was the latter.)

A few years back I was working part time and living in Huntington Beach.  I pretty much had it made (if you wanna look at it that way).  I had a sugar mama.  I lived in a gorgeous place.  The weather was amazing.  I slept in.  I surfed when I wanted.  I watched TV.  I listened to music.  I played guitar.  I went swimming.  I did pretty much what I wanted.

Then everything changed.

Several months later a little baby girl arrived in our lives.  Sugar mama and I switched places.  She stayed home and I worked.  I got up early and left our gorgeous town.  There was no more sleeping in.  Surfing was much harder to come by.  Swimming didn’t happen very often.  Now there was a screaming little girl who needed our constant attention.

Everything was different, yes, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

It’s pretty crazy to look back at our lives and remember what it was like to come and go whenever you please.  The time of day (or night) didn’t make a difference.  Movies.  Restaurants.  Workouts.  Walks on the beach.  Anything.  But when that little kid comes into your lives, all the priorities change.  All the schedules change.  Yes, I still love sleeping in, surfing, amazing beach weather, etc., but now they all have their time and place.  And that time and place is always falling behind a little girl who is walking all over the place, loves to climb on daddy, eats a massive amount of Cheerio’s, requires a diaper change rather often, and has the most amazing laugh in the world.

Good luck beating that. I look back and see how things were and how they are different now.  I’m glad I made the switch.

Well, it’s official…thankfully…  We only have one bun in the oven and not 2.  That makes our bank account breathe a big sigh of relief (although twins might have been kind fun…or put us in the loony bin…one of the two).  But for now, we just get to sit back, play with Jessi Girl, attempt to get mama to eat (anybody wanna put money down on the specific day that we have to take her to the hospital because she hasn’t eaten or gained any weight?), and watch this fun little video of 2.0 showing off his/her dancing skills (which I’m sure 2.0 gets from 2.0′s mom).

Since we don’t know the sex yet, it may be a little too early to play Name That Baby here on the blog, so for now, just sit back, relax, enjoy a little blues and watch our baby flop all over the place!

Today my first little girl turned 10 months old!  That means that we are only a few months away from moving to the year column and stop counting by months.  Wow.  It’s all gone by so fast.  And yes, we have said that a million times and everyone always says it, but it is so true.

It makes me think of a verse in the Psalms.

Oh! we’re all puffs of air.
Oh! we’re all shadows in a campfire.
Oh! we’re just spit in the wind.
We make our pile, and then we leave it.

Psalm 39:6

Time does fly by.  Another version of that verse says “Each man’s life is but a breath.”  That’s a hard verse to swallow a lot of the time.  When things are going well.  When the bank account has many digits.  When the actual new car smell is still stinging the nostrils.  When your little girl is looking up at you and smiling.  Most of our lives we don’t live as if our life is a puff of air or just a breath.  We like to think that we have all the time in the world.  But, we don’t have a ton of time here so we have to be the best managers of the time we do have.

Remember that next time you are debating between the big game and pouring into your kid.  Remember it when you are choosing between movies and spending time developing the relationship with your wife.  Remember it when you have a chance to bless the guy in line at Starbucks who forgot his wallet.  Remember that when the homeless guy doesn’t have a place to go for Thanksgiving.

You can only hold your breath for so long before you lose it.  Better do something worth it while you can!

Yes, that’s right!  Coming to a hospital near us (hopefully) this fall…September to be a little more exact…we will be adding a new little screaming, eating, pooping child to our little family!

Are we cray?  Yes, probably so.  But hey, did you see the gorgeous little girl in the picture above?  Yeah.  You can’t stop that train.  Plus we have all these toys that Jessi Girl won’t be playing with anymore in a few months so we needed to do something to keep them all in use.  What’s that?  Give them away?  Right.  Didn’t think about that.  Oh well!

With Jessi, we waited to announce that we were pregnant until about 12 weeks, but we decided this time that since you all are really part of our family, we wanted to bring you in on it ASAP!  Honestly we have suspected this for a week or so, but we just got confirmation yesterday (and no, the flu and other sickness were not covers)…so, yeah!  Welcome to the inner circle!  Plus it can’t hurt to have more people praying for our newest little bun in the oven (hint hint, please do that…it would be stellar of you)!

So as we go along do this crazy chaotic journey of two children under the age of 2 and working toward adoption as well, you will have the opportunity to follow the madness, pray for the lot of us, offer up names, put money down on the sex of the baby and so much more!

So stay tuned!!!

In keeping with the time honored tradition of terrifying the good will toward men out of our children, I present to you Jessi & The Claus.

As I have stated before, there isn’t much that is more fun, entertaining, hilarious, and awesome as watching your child learn and experience all kinds of things for the first time.  The plums were amazing.  The lemons almost as good.  And of course there is always the staples: smiling, laughing, talking, standing, crawling, etc.

But this one is for sure in my top 3 along with the plums and lemons.  Maybe it’s because my daughter is so facially expressive.  Maybe it is just because it is hilarious.  I don’t know.  But whatever it is, it is awesome!  Now you get to be a part of my daughter trying chicken for the first time.

(PS – there is nothing wrong with the chicken.  KK and I actually both had it as well with much less reaction.)